Blog 4

This post will be on providing affective and effective praise to students. Marzano points out in chapter 8 the importance of providing students with effective feedback. In everything I graded while doing my clinical I tried to provide feedback. It did not matter if it was something that I was collecting for a completion grade, I was going to make sure the students knew that I cared enough to at least read what they took the time to do when I am the one who asked them to do whatever it is they did. I don't really get mad when I get something back and I cannot tell if the teacher read it or not, however when I know the teacher took the time to read something and I can tell through their feedback, it makes me feel a little different about the teacher. It helps the students respect you, even if they are unaware they are doing so as a result of something that appears to be so simple.

I always hate getting back and paper that is covered in red ink with every single, possible mistake pointed out. When I graded my students' papers, there were times where I do beleive I was too easy on them. However, I was did not know beyond a shadow of a doubt the level they were being held to prior to me being their teach for just a few weeks. One thing I always made sure that I did was write something possitive on every single paper. Even if something was wrong, I was sure to word what I wrote in such a way as to not be negative. Another thing that I did to make it so my feedback would be positive was to not use a red pen. I bought a green one:) Red is associated with so much negative. It does stick out and you can see what you write and the studetns can too, however there are alot of colors out there that stick out just as well as red. Marzano points out it is important to provide effective feedback when improvement is shown. This is something else I tried to do. Even though I was only playing teacher for a relatively short time, I was still able to see improvement in some of the students' work. I was able to recognize when more effort was shown on an assignment than on a previous assignment.
The overall theme that I tried to stick to was making sure the majority of the feedback I provided was positive. If students begin to associate negative things with my class I feel as though I am losing the battle. Research shows that social studies classes in general are some of the classes students love to hate. If the feedback we give to students is affective, which it all should and could be, then what could possibly happen when much of the affective feedback we give is negative? If I am providing a student with affective feedback which is negative and that student is already struggling then it is my beleif that that student could continue to struggle as a result.
Everything is not roses and daises and every student assignment is not amazing. Incorrect answers need to me marked wrong and incorrect statements, grammer, etc. should be corrected in a paper. The point I am trying to make is that we should focus on positive feedback as opposed to feedback which could have an adverse effect.